Biden finds a new Manchin whisperer

By Tara Palmeri

The White House is looking to Sen. MARK WARNER (D-Va.) to help thaw out its frosty relationship with Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) in hopes of resurrecting President JOE BIDEN’s Build Back Better plan.

Two senior Senate sources said that Warner, one of Manchin’s closest friends and his former housemate, will be involved in any future BBB talks. Manchin has said publicly that he’s not negotiating with the White House. Privately, he has been even more pessimistic.

“He’s not in the mindset of moving forward,” said a source close to Manchin.

The West Virginia Democrat has complained about a lack of “effective outreach” or “reset” by top White House aides, and blamed them for making the BBB negotiations too personal. Manchin has spoken to STEVE RICCHETTI, Biden’s Hill whisperer, once since Christmas. But he’s still angry with chief of staff RON KLAIN, who he believes told press secretary JEN PSAKI to “unleash the dogs” in a heated White House statement after the senator announced on “Fox News Sunday” that he was a “no” on the bill.

Spokespeople for both Warner and Biden demurred about the specifics of the Virginia senator’s exact role in the effort to win over Manchin.

“Sen. Warner and Sen. Manchin are good friends,” a Warner spokesperson told Playbook. “They talk regularly, sometimes about policy and sometimes just shooting the breeze. I wouldn’t call those conversations ‘negotiations.’”

“A wide range of members are working on Build Back Better,” said White House spokesperson ANDREW BATES, “but Sen. Warner is not negotiating on behalf of the White House.”

However they want to characterize the effort, they’re still far from having Manchin on board. “I don’t think they’ll be able to coax him back into BBB,” the source close to Manchin told Playbook. “He’ll listen to Mark Warner, but he won’t do what he wants.”

“Sen. Manchin clearly articulated his policy concerns with Build Back Better, which are rooted in rising inflation, the ongoing pandemic and the geopolitical uncertainty around the world,” said a Manchin spokesperson. “He has tremendous respect for the president and his staff and will continue to look for ways to work together.”

Still, Manchin seems unmoved. And meanwhile, the White House has discussed repackaging BBB by breaking off a piece or pieces of policy to revive the talks, a senior Senate source said, adding that negotiations are still ongoing.

ON A CLOSELY RELATED NOTE, our own Burgess Everett has a look this morning on the stepped-up lobbying effort to get Manchin to change Senate rules and advance voting-rights legislation. In recent days, Manchin’s phone line has lit up with calls from former Presidents BILL CLINTON, BARACK OBAMA, and TV legend OPRAH WINFREY.

But that push, the strongest voices “aren’t liberal activists or die-hard filibuster opponents. Instead, they're a small group of his friends who once shared his reluctance”: Sens. JON TESTER (D-Mont.), TIM KAINE (D-Va.) and ANGUS KING (I-Maine).

In 2017, all three joined Manchin in signing a letter promising to “preserve existing rules” of the Senate. But now, “they all say the Jan. 6 insurrection and other events have changed their minds,” and are trying to get their friend/colleague to join them.

“Kaine likened the effort to his 27-hour drive to Washington earlier this week after a snowstorm devastated I-95: ‘Slow progress toward a goal, like my commute,’” Burgess writes. “For the trio of Senate optimists, Manchin’s openness alone, a year after he vowed to never change the filibuster, is something of a victory.”

Happy Friday, and thanks for reading Playbook. Drop us a line: Rachael Bade, Eugene Daniels, Ryan Lizza, Tara Palmeri.

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FOUR IMPORTANT JAN. 6 STORIES — News outlets flooded their feeds with coverage commemorating the anniversary of the insurrection, debating its effects on American politics and even, occasionally, shedding new light on the horrors of the day. Here are four pieces that stuck out to us:

1) Behind the scenes of Biden’s big speech — In his address from the Capitol on Thursday, Biden “unburdened himself from the norms of presidential deference and unleashed a torrent of attacks against his immediate predecessor.” WaPo’s Tyler Pager and Annie Linskey have a look at the making of that speech, and the very conscious decision to talk all about DONALD TRUMP without ever once mentioning him by name. A couple of interesting nuggets: 1) Biden and his aides decided to go after Trump while calculating “that his speech at Thursday’s remembrance event would draw maximum media attention.” 2) Biden was apparently involved in “the framing and writing of the speech,” as were aides MIKE DONILON, VINAY REDDY and historian-turned-Biden-confidante JON MEACHAM.

2) & 3) A pair of must-see TV interviews — If you want a picture of where the Republican Party is post-Jan. 6, watch these two extraordinary exchanges from Thursday.

— CNN’s Jake Tapper spoke with KEVIN O’TOOLE, a former staffer for House Minority Leader KEVIN MCCARTHY, who voiced fierce criticism of his onetime boss.

“His leadership strategy is dictated by the most extreme wings of his party,” O’Toole said. “And so, when MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE or MATT GAETZ put their thumb on the scale, that’s what he responds to. And that drives the House Republican Conference into the arms of somebody like Donald Trump. … The leadership that enables that behavior is continuing today, as we’ve seen.”

It’s a fascinating interview. Staffers rarely speak out like this against sitting lawmakers, let alone leadership. That’s especially the case when, like O’Toole — who is now a staffer for Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) — they still work on the Hill.

— Fox News’ TUCKER CARLSON grilled Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas) for recently referring to the deadly pro-Trump riot on Jan. 6, 2021, as a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol.” (Carlson has repeatedly downplayed and diminished the seriousness of what happened on Jan. 6.)

Carlson: “You called this a ‘terror attack’ when by no definition was it a terror attack. That’s a lie. You told that lie on purpose, and I’m wondering why you did.”

Cruz: “Well, Tucker, thank you for having me on. … The way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy, and it was, frankly, dumb.”

Carlson: “I don’t buy that. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t buy that. … You take words as seriously as any man who’s ever served in the Senate. … I do not believe that you used that accidentally. I just don’t.”

It went on like that for seven minutes, with Carlson saying Cruz’s further explanation “doesn't make sense.” More from Myah Ward … ALSO, a fact-check, via Josh Gerstein: “About 45 Jan. 6 defendants are charged with a crime on the terrorism list: depredation of federal property.” … and via Reuters’ Brad Heath: “Federal prosecutors in DC have categorized more than 150 Jan. 6 cases as being ‘domestic terrorism’ in their internal case-tracking reports.”

4) SCOOP: Then VP-elect KAMALA HARRIS was in the DNC when a pipe bomb was discovered outside the building on Jan. 6. This story, which Betsy Woodruff Swan, Christopher Cadelago and Kyle Cheney broke Thursday afternoon, underscores just how close the nation came to a full-blown constitutional crisis one year ago.

— “DON’T FORGET: The bomb was placed the night before,” Kyle reminds us. “This means Harris entered the bulding with the bomb outside.”

JAN. 6: THE WORK THAT REMAINS — One year after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the political aftershocks are still reverberating. Rachael talks with Rep. JAMIE RASKIN (D-Md.) about his efforts to hold Trump accountable, and with congressional reporter Olivia Beavers about what it was like to be trapped in the Capitol that day. Listen and subscribe to Playbook Deep Dive

BIDEN’S FRIDAY (Eastern times):

— 10:45 a.m.: The president will deliver remarks on the December jobs report.

— 11:15 a.m.: The Bidens will leave the White House for Colorado, arriving in Louisville (via Denver) around 5 p.m.

— 5:30 p.m.: The Bidens will tour a neighborhood in Louisville. Then they’ll meet with families affected by the Marshall Fire at 6:35 p.m., and Biden will speak briefly.

— 8:10 p.m.: The Bidens will leave the area en route to Las Vegas, arriving at 10:25 p.m.

Principal deputy press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE will gaggle on Air Force One on the way to Colorado.

THE SENATE will meet at noon to take up AMITABHA BOSE’s nomination to head the Federal Railroad Administration.

THE HOUSE is out.

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PHOTO OF THE DAY

Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivers remarks alongside fellow lawmakers during a prayer vigil to commemorate the anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, Jan. 6. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

THE WHITE HOUSE

A TURNING POINT FOR BIDEN? — Biden’s speech Thursday fulfilled many Democrats’ long-standing hopes that he would step up his defense of democracy and fight against those who threaten it. Now, his allies “hope that Biden’s speech marks a turning point in the administration’s focus,” Laura Barrón-López reports.

Worth flagging: House Majority Whip JIM CLYBURN (D-S.C.) said that Dems’ problem isn’t their message; “the problem is the image, which I think that the president took a big step toward helping to change today. There are people who just generally feel that we are not being tough enough. If they continue that into not just Georgia, but Florida, go to Texas, go to North Carolina, go to these places where people think they have free rein [to restrict access to the ballot]. And I think that we'll see an excited base.”

FILLING THE RANKS — The White House announced its nomination of Army Lt. Gen. MICHAEL ERIK KURILLA to lead the U.S. Central Command, a role that oversees “military operations that include the Middle East as the Biden administration’s attempt to shift toward China has been complicated by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iran’s regional and nuclear ambitions,” WSJ’s Gordon Lubold and Nancy Youssef report.

CONGRESS

EXPLAIN THIS ONE TO YOUR 2004 SELF — Former VP DICK CHENEY paid a visit to the House floor Thursday, and “patiently waited to greet more than a dozen members waiting to shake his hand. They were all Democrats,” WaPo’s Marianna Sotomayor and Paul Kane report . “The man who was once portrayed by the Democratic Party as the dark villain of the Bush administration, responsible for failed wars, ruinous energy policies and torturing America’s enemies in a betrayal of the nation’s values has found common ground with his onetime foes over Jan. 6.”

ALL POLITICS

CUOMO EYES A COMEBACK? — Several prosecutors have moved to not bring charges against former New York Gov. ANDREW CUOMO. And although he still faces federal and state inquiries, “people who have known him for years expect the moment to embolden him, even as many in his party have no interest in opening another Cuomo chapter,” NYT’s Katie Glueck reports . “Over the past few months, Mr. Cuomo has reached out to friends and associates to sound them out about the political landscape, and some who have spoken with him came away with the impression that he is interested in finding a way back to relevance in public life.” Remember: Cuomo has an $18 million war chest and a bullish publicist.

KRISTOF CROSSED OFF — Oregon’s secretary of state ruled Thursday that NICK KRISTOF, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who recently resigned his coveted perch as a NYT columnist to run for governor of Oregon, failed to meet the three-year residency requirement needed to qualify for the office. (As recently as November 2020, he voted in New York, notes The Oregonian’s Hillary Borrud.)

— Kristof sounded a decidedly Trumpy note in response: “A failing political establishment in Oregon has chosen to protect itself, rather than give voters a choice. We will challenge this decision in court, and we are confident we will prevail, because the law is on our side.”

THE PANDEMIC

PUT TO THE TEST — WaPo’s Jacob Bogage and Dan Diamond scooped that the White House is finalizing its plan to send 500 million rapid at-home tests to Americans. They’re working with the U.S. Postal Service and will create a website where people can request the tests. An announcement could come next week, and shipments by the middle of the month.

STATISTIC OF THE DAY — The majority of cases counted as Covid-19 hospitalizations in some parts of the country are actually patients admitted for other reasons whose Covid infections were “discovered incidentally,” WaPo’s Dan Diamond, Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating report.

The pandemic, they write, is now a tale of two variants: In “Omicron epicenters such as New York City, … many patients aren’t aware they’re infected until testing positive while visiting the hospital for other procedures,” while in places like “Michigan and Minnesota, … health workers continue to treat patients fighting for survival against the more severe Delta variant.”

TIME FOR A CHANGE? — In three new opinion pieces in the Journal of the American Medical Association, six prominent former Biden health advisers urged the president “to adopt an entirely new domestic pandemic strategy geared to the ‘new normal’ of living with the virus indefinitely, not to wiping it out,” NYT’s Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes. “Like any White House, Mr. Biden’s prizes loyalty and prefers to keep its differences in house; in that regard, the articles are an unusual step. The authors say they wrote them partly because they have not made headway talking directly to White House officials.” Read the articles

AMERICA AND THE WORLD

THE NEW CRISIS ON RUSSIA’S DOORSTEP — Violent unrest in Kazakhstan this week has prompted the U.S. Embassy there to take new security precautions, as some experts worry that Russia will take advantage of the situation to make incursions into the country, Quint Forgey, Erin Banco and Nahal Toosi report.

— The latest: “Kazakh leader ordered use of lethal force on ‘terrorists,’” by AP’s Dasha Litvinova in Moscow

TV TONIGHT — PBS’ “Washington Week,” focusing on Jan. 6: Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Carol Leonnig, Ryan Reilly and Jake Sherman.

SUNDAY SO FAR …

STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.

At a House event remembering Jan. 6, Lin-Manuel Miranda introduced several “Hamilton” cast members, who commemorated a deadly riot at which people shouted “hang Mike Pence” by performing a song from a musical about a man who got in a duel with a VP.

Dick Cheney checked out the marble bust of himself while visiting the Senate side of the Capitol. “He said it was ‘a little bit’ weird to see himself in stone,” reports HuffPost’s Igor Bobic.

Adam Kinzinger missed the House’s Jan. 6 commemorations, as many people noted. The congressman explained why via Twitter: He’s expecting the imminent birth of his child.

Mike Pompeo lost 90 pounds in six months.

Pete Buttigieg called Chuck Schumer to talk about the New Yorker’s long passion: the Second Avenue subway line.

BACK TO SCHOOL — Former Trump White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman has recently enrolled as a law student at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, La. Manigault Newman — who already has a master’s degree in telecom law and has studied the Bible at a theological seminary — told Daniel Lippman that she plans to focus on telecom law and policy after graduating. “I love it,” she said. “I got a 3.5 in my first semester.” She said she first became interested in telecom issues when she worked in the White House for then-VP Al Gore. But it was really the 2011 murder of her brother that pushed her to become a lawyer. “When I was sitting in the courtroom with the monster who murdered him, I felt helpless. I felt like I wanted to do something,” she said.

MEDIA MOVE — Daniel Bush is the new White House correspondent for Newsweek on the Washington enterprise team. He previously was senior political reporter at PBS NewsHour.

TRANSITIONS — D.J. Jordan will be chief of staff to Virginia A.G.-elect Jason Miyares. He currently is an SVP at Pinkston, and is a James Lankford alum. … Kayte Steinmetz will be a senior account supervisor on Edelman’s financial comms/capital markets team. She previously was an editorial producer at CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”

ENGAGED — Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, and Mark Kiefer, a Ph.D. student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and former aviation engineer, got engaged recently. He met her in Nashville with a dozen roses, took her back to the little Italian restaurant where they first met and then proposed at sunset along the river. The couple were introduced through mutual friends. Pic

WELCOME TO THE WORLD — Darien Flowers, deputy policy director for the Senate Commerce GOP, and Kirsten Flowers, a manager at Eagle Hill Consulting, welcomed Olivia Nicole Flowers, their first child, on Saturday. Pic … Another pic

— Sarah Schmidt, head of government relations for health at Palantir and a Rob Portman alum, and Mark Gilbride, who works in government and industry relations at Freddie Mac and is a Steve Stivers alum, on Tuesday welcomed Ellie Anne Gilbride, who came in at 8 lbs, 1 oz and 20 inches.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) … Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) … NSC’s Yohannes Abraham … Dave Banks … The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf … Jon Clark … Meta’s Nick Clegg … Adam Entous … CMS’ Ernie Tai … Alex Milofsky of Val Demings’ Florida Senate campaign … Fox Business Network’s Dagen McDowell … Maura Keefe of Keefe Strategies … NBC’s John Reiss … Cherie Short of the Giving Groupe … Stewart Boss of Sen. Jacky Rosen’s (D-Nev.) office … Megan Clarke of Fox News … Lauren Harmon Murphy of Swing Left … Stewart Verdery of Monument Advocacy … Rishi Sahgal … APCO’s Tim Kraus … Holly Shulman … Max Mallory of Hamilton Place Strategies … Linda Douglass … former Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) … Axios’ Ben Geman ... Greg Bury … Ashley Callen ... Monica Lee ... Cory Crowley ... Brett Shogren ... Judge Paul D. Borman … Jordan Karem … Katie Couric … Taylor Gee

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